In October 2005, John Loiacono, executive vice president of software at Sun Microsystems, commented: "We're not going to OEM Microsoft but we are looking at PostgreSQL right now,"[7] although no specifics were released at that time. By November 2005, Sun had announced support for PostgreSQL.[8] By June 2006, Sun Solaris 10 (6/06 release) shipped with PostgreSQL.

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Why would this be the end of MySQL? If Oracle were to kill off MySQL, they would be guaranteed to make no profit off of it, & Postgres might become a really viable competitor. If they keep MySQL around, they can reap the benefits of offering professional services for MySQL customers along with leveraging control over Postgres' future marketshare.

In fact, with Oracle owning both, they can make sure that "improvements" which might be going into MySQL will somehow be delayed, not be as good, become really hard to implement -- making sure that their flagship commercial product continues to be the "best" solution for big customers with deep pockets.

As always, this is merely conjecture, but there is no reason to think that Oracle would blatantly pull the plug on MySQL when ownership could mean that they can capitalize on yet another revenue stream.

And for history buffs, the early database companies (ie. Tandem...) made their own hardware for their database. There can be a lot of performance & stability gains made when the entire system is owned by one entity (what is old is new again...). However, the disadvantage is that they can move away from the de facto marketplace standards & become quite closed.

I think, not that Oracle will take any steps to kill MySQL, but that the community will be very uncomfortable with the clear conflict of interest between Improving MySQL and selling Oracle.So the shift will be made to a MySQL descendant that is not under their direct control.

__________________The only dumb question is a question not asked.
The only dumb answer is an answer not given.

Oracle's database software is heavily deployed on the Solaris platform, so Oracle clearly has relevant business interests in the future of Solaris. Oracle is, however, also very strongly committed to the Linux operating system. Oracle sells its own Linux support services on top of Red Hat's stack and is also as a major contributor to the Linux kernel. As a major player in both worlds, Oracle has every reason to want to encourage greater collaboration between the Linux and OpenSolaris communities. I suspect that this will lead Oracle to rethink Sun's licensing decisions for OpenSolaris.

When Sun liberated the Solaris source code, the company deliberately chose a license that would make it difficult for the code to be adapted for use in the Linux kernel. Oracle will probably dual-license the Solaris code so that it is available under the GPLv2 in addition to the CDDL. This will allow key Solaris innovations—such as ZFS and DTrace—to be ported to Linux.

This is interesting, because the presence of these tools was quickly becoming a key differentiating feature between Linux and more free Unixen. I guess that's good for everyone in the long run, but as a fan of BSD and of non-copyleft licenses in general, I would selfishly be a little disappointed if this came to pass.

Is it even possible to really kill MySQL?
MySQL is GPL, so if Oracle does decide to pull the plug a fork can be started by the FOSS people -- I know it will be a serious setback and that it sounds easier than it is, but MySQL won't `die' ...

As a sidenote, I didn't know Oracle was so big that they could take over Sun ...

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I can imagine that Oracle will invest money in building / improving MySQL -> Oracle conversion tools, perhaps making an Oracle "lite" more MySQL friendly, that sort of thing. Perhaps they have - I stopped paying attention to Oracle about 7 years ago. Prior to that I spent most of my time with MSSQL and Oracle. Following that almost all Postgres or no SQL at all (object databases mostly).

Bulk loading is one thing Postgres and Oracle had back then that MySQL did not, at least not efficient bulk loading.

Most likely, IMO, would be an effort to bring MySQL up to the point where it can become Oracle Lite, to be used as a the gateway drug to Oracle Express, which is just a stepping-stone to the full Oracle. All with nice, for-pay migration tools. Get'em hooked on the free stuff, then reel them in for the big bucks!!

My bet is that we are going to see a lot of development going toward creating a nice spectrum with MySQL+scripting-language-du-jour+whatever-OS on the one end and Oracle DB+Java+Solaris+SPARC on the other, with MySQL on Solaris in the middle.

At the same time, we'll see a nice push to get Oracle optimised for all the storage goodness in Solaris, and a stronger focus on storage hardware solutions/products.

And, hopefully, some consolidating and strengthening of the Enterprise Java stack, again, all nicely optmised for the heavilly threaded T1/T2/the-next-SPARC architecture.

In theory, Oracle can become the next IBM, providing everything you could want in a DB server, storage server, Java server, etc. With all the nice expensive support staff in-house.

As a vertical, all-in-one-shop setup, they're looking really good. Especially if you look at things in the long-term, and skip over the knee-jerk reactions.

The bits that will be interesting to watch are OpenOffice.org, VirtualBox, and all the other non-DB-related bits that SUN had. Those don't really fit into the new Oracle landsape, IMO.

Most likely, IMO, would be an effort to bring MySQL up to the point where it can become Oracle Lite, to be used as a the gateway drug to Oracle Express, which is just a stepping-stone to the full Oracle. My bet is that we are going to see a lot of development going toward creating a nice spectrum of software from MySQL+scripting-language-du-jour on the one end and Oracle DB+Java stack on the other, with MySQL-on-Solaris in the middle.

At the same time, we'll see a nice push to get Oracle optimised for all the storage goodness in Solaris, and a stronger focus on storage hardware solutions/products.

And, hopefully, some consolidating and strengthening of the Enterprise Java stack, again, all nicely optmised for the heavilly threaded T1/T2/the-next-SPARC architecture.

As a vertical, all-in-one-shop setup, they're looking really good. I wouldn't be surprised to see a return to the hardware-database-appliance model.

The bits that will be interesting to watch are OpenOffice.org, VirtualBox, and all the other non-DB-related bits that SUN had.

There are enough groups wanting to pickup the OpenOffice.org ball and run with it, if Sun would only drop it.
Novell is one group that maintains a very nice patchset to openoffice. (I think the Ubuntu openoffice uses it.)

__________________The only dumb question is a question not asked.
The only dumb answer is an answer not given.